The Magic of Humanity in Production
Clients have started asking how we use AI on their productions, and the answer starts with a moment on set that nobody scripted.
AI Can Join the Crew. But It Can’t Replace It.
I came to production from journalism, and both taught me the same lesson: the best material is usually the thing you didn’t plan for.
My favorite example of this is a spot we made for CG Insurance called “Embarrassing Parents.” Near the end, the parents and the ex-boyfriend are sitting together; he tells a joke, and they all crack up at once, really rolling. It felt so human, and true to the Black experience: when something’s funny, you’re not quiet about it. You’re rolling. It was one of the last setups of a long day. The actors had spent hours together; they genuinely liked each other, and our director, Wes Whitener, gave them room to play. Of all the takes, that’s the one we knew had to go in.
Nobody wrote that moment. It came from a room full of people paying attention to the same thing at the same time.
I think about that whenever someone asks how we’re using AI, and clients have started asking a lot. My answer is: carefully. Not because I’m afraid of it, but because I know what it can’t do.
I’m not anti-AI; I’m discerning
AI isn’t going away, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone, least of all our clients. We use it. But a tool that helps the people making the work is different from a tool sold as a replacement for them.
Most of the conversation right now blurs that line, and I’d like to draw it.
Great work is a group project
Think about what actually goes into a spot that lands. It starts long before anyone is on set, with a strategy that knows what the work needs to do and a creative team with an idea worth making. Then an agency producer who protects that idea. A line producer who makes the budget work. A director who knows how to talk to actors, and actors who give them something nobody wrote down. A DP who sees the light changing and moves. An editor who finds the cut. A colorist, a sound designer, and a mixer, each adding something the person before them couldn’t.
That’s a lot of perspective and expertise in one process, and that’s the point. Every one of those people pushes the work somewhere it wouldn’t have gone without them.
A prompt is one voice. No matter how good the person typing, AI hands back a single, distilled take on whatever it was asked for. Nobody pushes back. Nobody says, “What if we tried it this way?” There’s no collaboration in it, and collaboration is how you bottle lightning.
The math isn’t mathing
Here’s the pitch some brands are hearing: we can do more for less with AI, and your customers will never notice.
Friends, they’ll notice. And the math doesn’t hold up, either.
Usable AI video takes a skilled prompter up front and more quality control on the back end, not less, because someone has to make sure it doesn’t look like AI. If you hold the work to the same standard, you haven’t cut the labor. You’ve moved it.
We learned that firsthand on an AI job earlier this year. You prompt something once and get one result. Prompt it again, and you get something completely different. There’s no continuity, so you chase it, and chasing takes time.
The way we usually work is simple by comparison. Shoot to the boards, get into the edit, and if a shot isn’t working, move it, swap it, done. In that same amount of time, the machine is still trying to figure it out, and the results vary. That’s when clients get frustrated, and the money they thought they were saving evaporates.
The people in the frame
Being careful is about more than quality. When you care about craft, you care about the people who make it: the crew, the actors, the voices, and the faces on screen. Choosing a production partner means supporting that whole community, whether you think about it that way or not.
The industry is already drawing its own lines. Talent agents are asking us to sign agreements saying we won’t use their actors’ or voice actors’ likenesses in AI. We sign them, happily.
I’ve been saying it for months: it doesn’t look good, and people don’t like it. Now there’s data.
In a Bentley University and Gallup survey of more than 3,200 U.S. adults this May, three in four said using AI to brainstorm or draft an ad is fine, as long as it’s disclosed. But 62% said using AI to create people or voices in ads is unacceptable, even with disclosure. Among adults under 30, that number is 73%.
In other words, audiences don’t much care where AI shows up in the process. They care whether it replaces the people on screen and the people behind the camera. And the generation that cares most is the one every brand is trying to reach next.
Where AI belongs: behind the scenes
None of this means AI has no place. It does. It just works backstage.
Here’s a recent example. A client going through a rebrand needed more than 200 still images updated so the people in them wore the new brand color. Our editor ran a test with AI and had it working in about fifteen minutes. That’s task work, not creative work, and exactly the kind of job AI should take off a person’s plate.
Editing is where this gets interesting. Deliverable lists keep growing. Post budgets and timelines don’t. AI can help us version, resize, and adapt a finished spot into everything a campaign needs, without blowing the budget or burning out the team. But the main edit still gets made the way it always has, with an editor in the seat.
Every discipline will land somewhere different on this, and that’s how it should be. In operations, analytics, and systems, AI is already earning its keep. When the work is craft, we have to be more careful.
The bottom line
Use AI with a discerning eye and a light touch, and everyone stands to benefit.
The people making the work get time back for what matters most: the craft they’ve spent their careers mastering. Clients get more out of their budgets. And audiences stay engaged, because what they’re watching still feels like people made it. We keep our humanity intact, and nobody has to explain why their spot landed in the uncanny valley.
Use it carelessly, and you’re paying for content your audience has already learned to scroll past. At that point, what are you spending your money on?
AI can join the crew. But it can’t replace it.